Poetry on the Road 2011

Poetry on the Road is an international literature festival which is held every year in Bremen, Germany. From 2002 — 2013, I was commisioned to design a visual theme for the festival. While the theme itself was changing, the underlying idea for the visuals was always the same: All graphics were generated by a computer program that turned texts into images. So every image is the direct representation of a specific text. The design and the development process were a collaboration with the design agency one/one.

What looks like a strange coral reef is actually a particle system. The basic rule in this years concept ist that every word in the poem is represented by a particle. Each word particle “chases” the following word.

Depending on the frequency in the text, all the words have different sizes. Furthermore, each particle has a specific spin that creates the twirls.

The colours of each particle are taken from a photo from the hometown of each author. Not really generative – but it creates very nice colour schemes.